Chapter Three: The Great Pony Escape

Published 4:53 am, Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Photo: Andrew Nunley

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Chapter Three: The Great Pony Escape

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By DAVID BYE

It was a beautiful fall day as Jim and I headed to school on our ponies. The leaves were starting to turn and the fall air had an early morning chill to it. The migratory birds were starting to form up for their migration south. We were enjoying our ride to school. In a few short weeks, it would be too cold to ride our ponies to school.

When we got to school we tied Tony and Silver to a log at the back of the school. Dad had brought two 20-foot ropes to the school for us to tie up our ponies. He also taught us how to tie the rope around the ponies’ neck so that the rope would not choke them. The knot we used was called a Granny Knot. We filled Tony and Silver’s water buckets and fed them some timothy hay that Dad had brought to school. We had just finished caring for the ponies when the school bell rang. It was time to go to school.

The school day was going well. Ms. Elsie, our teacher, had all the students busy. Everyone was working hard at their lessons. The older students were helping the younger student with their work, Ms. Elsie was busy helping the student with their assignments. Ms. Elsie thought to herself, “The students are sure working had today.” Then all of a sudden things started to go downhill.

Roger looked out the window and shouted, “The ponies are running away!” Tony and Silver had decided that it was time to go home to the barn. They were running down the road dragging the log behind them.

Everyone jumped out of their desks and started running after the ponies. Ms. Elsie said to herself, “I knew that something like this would happen. Things were going too good!”

The log that Tony and Silver were dragging behind them slowed them down. The students were able to catch up with them after they had got a couple hundred yards down the road.

Warren’s dad lived just down the road from the school house and saw all the students standing in the middle of the road. He got in his truck and hurried over to see what was going on. When he got there, Warren told his Dad what had happened. “Dad,” Warren said, “The ponies ran away from school and we all ran after them.” Warren’s dad told us to untie the ponies from the log and to take them back to the schoolhouse. Then he got some of the bigger boys to load the log into his pickup.

We did what Warren’s Dad told us to do. This time we tied the ponies to a tree.